I’ve been around the world a million times
And all you m*n are sl*me!
Last Saturday marked the end of February and the appearance of the last of this year’s “29 Posts in 29 Days,” which featured underrated and overrated recording artists.
Now that it’s March, I had planned to go back to talking about more of the great records that I first heard on Steven Lorber’s “Mystic Eyes” radio program back in 1980.
But before I do that, I feel compelled to address a scurrilous accusation made by Facebook concerning the February 20 2 or 3 lines post.
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2 or 3 lines has been the target of quite a few scurrilous accusations in the past, but none of them were scurrilouser than Facebook’s recent allegation that my wildly popular little blog was guilty of disseminating hate speech. Sacré bleu!
This scurrilousest of all accusations was apparently inspired by my quoting this line from “100%,” the Sonic Youth song that was featured in that post:
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And all you men are slime!
Facebook’s community standards algorithm failed to notice that I was simply quoting a song – not making a misandrous statement.
But even if I had been expressing my opinion or belief rather than simply quoting a song lyric, would my words have really deserved to be labelled as hate speech?
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Charles Dickens famously said that “the law is an ass.”
If Facebook had existed when Dickens was alive, I have no doubt that he would amended that quote to read “the law is an ass – and so is Facebook, of course.”
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Gatsby was fabulously wealthy, and so is Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. The company’s market cap is currently over $500 billion, but apparently that’s enough for them to be able to afford an algorithm that knows what is hate speech and what isn’t.
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Click here to listen to Sonic Youth’s “100%,” which includes the words “AND ALL YOU MEN ARE SLIME!”
Click below to buy the song from Amazon:
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